Rotten to the Core?

A few weeks ago I finally went out to the apple tree in our back yard and picked and knocked down the rest of the apples. I had not been able to get to them because of the tyranny of the urgent that caring for my mom had brought in addition to all my other duties as a wife and mom.

Some of the apples were obviously rotten, and some of them were maybe only half rotten.  Others looked like they were still pretty good!

So I sat down to the task of seeing how much I could salvage.  The apples that were completely rotten didn’t even come into the house.  The half-rotten ones I quartered to see how much was still good; I saved as much as I could, freezing the good apple pieces to be prepared later into some delicious baked delights.

I was surprised several times when I cut open apples that looked like they were good, only to find that the core was rotten!  I had to cut out the core anyway, but it was mush, and the rottenness was spreading from the inside out.

It was interesting, because I’ve always heard the expression “rotten to the core”, as though the rottenness began on the outside and worked its way in.

Apparently it doesn’t always work that way.

Sometimes rottenness is from the core.

God had a little talk with me that day about how we can begin to go astray in our hearts where no one can see.  He gently showed me that the complaining and self-pity and other bad attitudes that I’ve been having due to my reactions to the additional stresses in my life have been just as gross and disgusting in my heart as all the rotten apple mess that I had been cutting out.

He let me know that I needed to give all that yucky stuff to Him completely and let Him clean my heart up again and make me new from the inside out.

I’ve got to say that I’ve been much happier since that little powwow with Jesus.

Our hearts were not made to be truly happy until Jesus washes away our sins and gets all that rottenness out of there.

Apparently it’s really important to Him!  I’m pretty sure He didn’t come from heaven and go through the awfulness of Calvary just to give us one option among many of how we could reach Him!

If there were other ways to be at peace with God, He could have saved Himself the trouble!

I’m glad that He came to save us from rottenness, whether it comes from the outside in or from the inside out!

He wants to make something beautiful out of our lives!

Imagine what He can do with us once He cleans us up!

I imagine that the end result will be MUCH better than the delicious dishes I have planned to make with the good apples in my freezer!

Don’t you think?  🙂